Vegetarian diets are best for health and the environment, according to a new position paper from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

The paper highlighted the benefits of a vegetarian diet, claiming that they can reduce obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and even some types of cancers.

The Academy now says that adopting a vegetarian or vegan diet is suitable for “all stages of the life cycle,” and that starting such a diet early in life can significantly reduce the risk of disease later in life.

What’s more is that plant-based diets are better for the environment and are more sustainable than animal based diets. According to the paper, vegetarian diets can reduce greenhouse gases by up to 50 percent.

“Becoming vegetarian can be beneficial to personal health and the environment,” says Vandana Sheth, a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

One of the strongest points in the paper is that adopting a vegetarian or vegan diet earlier in life can reduce childhood obesity.

“Children and adolescents with BMI values in the normal range are more likely to also be within the normal range as adults, resulting in significant disease risk reduction,” they add.

“Other benefits of a vegetarian diet in childhood and adolescence include greater consumption of fruits and vegetables, fewer sweets and salty snacks, and lower intakes of total and saturated fat. Consuming balanced vegetarian diets early in life can establish healthful lifelong habits.”

The environmental benefits should not be ignored. For example, the authors said that 1 kilogram of protein from kidney beans would require “18 times less land, 10 times less water, nine times less fuel, 12 times less fertilizer, and 10 times less pesticide in comparison to producing 1 kilogram of protein from beef.”

The authors concluded:

“If you could bottle up a plant-based prescription, it would become a blockbuster drug overnight. This way of eating creates an efficient energy source not just for the planet, but for our bodies.

What other drug increases metabolism, lowers blood pressure, stabilizes blood sugar, and instead of increasing the risk for heart disease or diabetes – stops it in its tracks?”

The study showing that vegetarian diets are best for health and the environment was published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

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